False Attraction
by sat-anpu
Summary: Even crows have trouble trying to perch on roses. Setting: Ep.14 "Poker Face" of 2nd gig, Saito's POV. Rated M for language.


Disclaimer: Any characters (in this case, Saito and Motoko) from the Ghost in the Shell universe do not belong to me. I did not create them and they are not mine. They belong to their respectful creators (NOT ME!).

Setting: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig, episode 14, during the famous "duel of snipers" between a young Motoko Kusanagi and a young Saito. THIS NEXT PART IS VERY IMPORTANT SO PLEASE READ IT! While I say that it "takes place" during episode 14, it really doesn't! Sound confusing? It is! This is Saito thinking about this stand off in his own mind (which he explained to the other poker players in episode 14: "Poker Face"), not explaining it to other people. So really, the time and setting this memory takes place is null and void.

Explaination: A one shot featuring Saito's point-of-view.

Author's Note:  The idea for this one shot randomly came to me at work while shredding papers for several hours. GITS is my biggest fandom ever (hell, my ONLY true fandom) and it's no surprise that I wrote this piece of work. Expect more. I'll admit I had a hard time capturing Saito as a character, so he may or may not be out-of-character. These are the thoughts of a younger Saito, not the Saito we see at all in the "current" Stand Alone Complex series. There are many things we don't know about the GITS characters. I always had love for Ishikawa and wanted to write a fan-fic about him, but that's not even in-the-making yet. There also may be tons (or not) of sentence structure errors. I wrote this in one night and I wanted to get it done. Work prevents me from having a personal life except maybe on weekends, so getting this done (while fresh in my mind) was top priority for me. Enjoy (sorry it might be confusing). Please leave reviews and comments, but no flames!

Author's Note 2: I screwed up on one part in this story because I got lazy. It's when the Major disarms Saito's gun right after she shoots his eye out. It's not exactly like how it happened in the episode so please, no flames for that! It was intentionally done that way...

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False Attraction

My adrenaline levels shot up like a bat out of hell. My hairs stood up on end and sweat came pouring out like water flowing down a hill. After assessing my situation, I knew at that moment I was going to die. Other snipers always told me that God abandoned them when they were about to be killed. My parents never raised me on any one religion, but if God had been with me, he wasn't any longer. Prayers would not save me now.

But dammit, she was beautiful. Everything about her was perfect,_ too_ perfect. I didn't see a single flaw but rather an individual of the highest perfection and creation. She was the standard canon. I was startled when I realized just how perfect she was. The thought hit me like a train wreck, that she was full prosthetic. She was a cyborg, an individual maybe, but she was a creature that could crawl through all kinds of levels of hell and come back without a single scratch on her. She was going to slaughter me. Everything about her, the way she stood, the fact she remained unflinching, and confident, had that look of "cyborg" written all over her.

I could only imagine how many men would have wooed over her, to only be disappointed in the end that nothing about her body was natural. She sure fooled me but I saw right through her masquerade of pretentious beauty.

I continued to be dehydrated. The thought of death was exciting, disappointing, and agonizing all at the same time. I was fucking scared down to the bone. But then I thought, it wouldn't be so bad. What sniper didn't want a beautiful woman to be his death? Then I forgot, you're fucking crazy Saito. She was a machine after all, poised and ready to lead me like a lamb to slaughter. She was a blossoming rose, waiting to be picked for a bouquet, only for the gardener to find out that wondrous rose bristled with thorns.

Not only was she cyborg, but her gun was a full-sensing semi-automatic and to boot, she had full installs of firing control software. Running trials in my head of what could happen, my hypothetic duel concluded that if I shot a single round at her, it would have ended up hitting and neutralizing her semi-automatic round. Not only would I not be able to recover quickly enough to fire another round, but she would have already shot another semi-automatic round at me. In that case, I was good as dead. The simulations were all the same, over and over again. I decided to hell with it anyway, I was going to die. So I tried to run last-minute ideas and scenarios through my brain of what I could try to do.

The first thing the Major shot was my jamming gear. It took her…three rounds to shoot through it. I was enlightened that it was possible that she didn't have mid-range firing control software. In order for her to shoot mid-range at me, she had to have been downloading the software. It was no damn wonder she was just standing there like a statue, unblinking. If I ever came close to being lost in the Major's perfective beauty, it was at that moment, where her hair was wet, where she was endowed with godly confidence, and she was in the process of downloading that software.

Tomfoolery aside, I could care less how perfected she was. "Get there first!" I remembered shouting from behind the pillar. My round was aimed for her head, particularly her cyber brain_. I'm going to kill you bitch._ As my round got closer to her, to my surprise, she shot a round from her semi-automatic. Both rounds flew past each other. My round only grazed her face, splitting a few of her hairs. Either way, I missed and the next thing I knew, her bullet came right through my eye. She literally shot my damn eye out. It all happened so quickly that my pain went unnoticed. I still had a chance, dammit. With what strength I had left, I pulled out my gun. All was too late as the Major came at me like lightning. She punched me (having my gun taken away from me), slammed me against the pillar, took hold of my right arm, pulled out a dagger and stabbed it into my left hand. I screamed, only for a moment, because she kept finding ways of torturing me.

I knew then it was all over. She had me caged like a lion, towering over me like a ringmaster with his damn whip. "You're good with that rifle, you son of a bitch." Her voice was calm, yet stern and powerful. "From now on, you're mine." Damn, I was her prisoner now. I'm surprised she didn't kill me then.

My voice was weak, but then it hit me. "You had…the software all along." This beautiful rose had tricked me, had completely undermined me as a sniper. Oddly enough, I didn't care that she had tricked me. Her fighting abilities were top-notch and I knew I had easily been tricked and defeated. She looked at me then, a faint smile on her face. I could not refuse to disobey her in my position. I realized later in life that was the first command she had ever given me.

If I was hers, that meant she wasn't going to let me die. Then again, she seemed to have no intention of getting me immediate medical treatment. We were out in some ruined town with nobody in it anymore, so of course immediate medical treatment was out of the question. The Major didn't show too much mercy towards me as she started dragging me. It dawned upon me that I had to tell her.

In my weakened state I blurted out to her, "you're beautiful, just like a rose." I don't know why I said it. I figured I should keep my mouth shut because I was still her prisoner. She could have easily decided that I was worth nothing to her in the end and just leave me here to die. The next moment she turned around and smacked me hard in the face. It was a brutal smack that sent me tumbling face down onto the cold and wet concrete. Good job Saito, now you're going to fucking die.

In the end, it was all false attraction. She attempted to move me with her beauty, only for me to get an ass beating in the finale. Maybe God really hadn't abandoned me after all.

I was dazed and disoriented. At least my jaw was still attached to my head, but I was still too damn weak to even get up. The next thing I knew the Major grabbed me by my shoulders. Her grip was of iron and she gave me even more pain by crushing my shoulder bones. She pulled me up, forcing me to look into her eyes. If I saw any part of her ghost, her soul, I saw it in her eyes for a fleeting moment. Then it disappeared. Oh well.

"If I have any beauty within me, you wouldn't know," she exclaimed to me in a mockingly calm voice. I got a feeling of sadness in me…sadness, for Christ's sake. Snipers are not supposed to have emotions. But of course, cyborgs are not supposed to have emotions either. I was human and she was no longer human, but that didn't stop me from comparing her to a rose. In the end she was a beautiful rose, albeit a stand alone one.

I would never attempt to pick this rose, let alone land on it, or I would be one sorry crow impaled upon her many thorns.


End file.
